ACT 03.14159 - OMAKE - "The Birds and the Bleeps"
Dr. Xadium (drxadium@DEATHTOSPAMgate.net)
January 31st, 2005
Naoko Takeuchi is hereby thanked for her involuntary contribution to this fanspamfic.
RATED TV-14 DSL
AUTHOR'S NOTE: There is actually a moral to this story, you know. Don't let the salacious sugar coating fool you. Also, blame insomnia and subsequent late night philosophizing for this. And seeing people UTTERLY MISS THE POINT about relationships sometimes. And a punchline that entered my brain and wouldn't let go.
TEN'OU HOUSE, VENUS, 2912. LATE NIGHT
A steady creaking noise came from the general direction of the plush velvet-red sofa in the livingroom. The constant spring-taxing rhythm was punctuated only by the odd gasp, sigh, giggle and moan, which would have made it embarrassingly clear to anyone in the room what was going on on top of it. Not that anyone should have been about, mind you. After all, it was three o'clock in the morning, and by all rights everyone should have been safely asleep (or otherwise engaged) in their own private quarters.
But if it was one transgression of nocturnal etiquette for two of the guests in Ten'ou House to be out of their assigned spots for the night, savouring a soft, sensual rendezvous in the starlit livingroom, then it could hardly be surprising that the third visitor to the house was also similarly contemptuous of the centuries-old social convention.
For, as the two softly sighing and tenderly touching figures on the sofa were about to find out, nothing was more irritatingly inconvenient than the wildly unpredictable circadian rhythms of a small, overly-inquisitive child.
"Ahem." Sakura coughed, standing directly behind the sofa, her Gallifreyan eyes allowing her to easily pick out the silhouette of one of her bobbing parents over the back of the couch.
"Geh." The creaking abruptly stopped, the mood shattered beyond any hope of salvage (Well as long as the child was standing in the room, anyway.)
"Sakura-chan?" Minako asked in a somewhat husky voice, coughing and trying to gain some measure of composure. For a moment, she simply sat there, merely blushing (for all the obvious reasons).
A millisecond later, the inevitable panic set in.
There was a quick scrambling and an "oof!" from her unfortunate husband, as all the flustered Princess of Venus could think of doing was to duck behind the back of the sofa, in the process striking him in the most predictably painful spot as she did so. (Ahh, parenting. The antithesis, but inevitable outcome, of passion.)
Like a small gopher or prairie dog, Minako's head popped up from behind the sofa, followed by Xadium's shortly thereafter. Their hair was matted and unkempt. Sweat was beaded on their foreheads (generated from equal parts pleasure and panic). It would have been obvious to the most cloistered monk in the Galaxy what had been going on between them. Yet, like good parents everywhere, they sought to preserve the purity of their cherished child, who was now staring at them directly-- unashamed, left eyebrow raised.
"Your mother and I--" Xadium began, preparing to issue forth an elaborately pre-prepared fabrication about calisthenics and isometric muscle training.
"Copulation, yes," Sakura said flatly.
A bullet to her parents' heads would have done less damage. In fact, it's probable they would have preferred it. That word, coming from the sugary sweet, high pitched voice of their beloved daughter, who was still knee-high to a knee (whatever that means), felt like the most obscene profanity.
"What did you say?" Minako asked weakly, generating quite possibly the world's largest sweatdrop.
"Copulation," Sakura restated clinically, breaking her gaze for a moment to affect a completely disinterested expression, rolling her eyes and sighing as she pedantically began, "the precursor act of procreation, usually between a male and a female of a species, the usual end result of which being that the male gamete joins with the female ovum, resulting in fertilization and the formation of a new embryo, which eventually becomes implanted in the lining of the uterus-- known in humans as the endometrium-- and a pregnancy begins."
Exhaling slightly, the little girl looked to her parents again, as if expecting some sort of prize for her scandalous recitation. But for some reason, they just stared at her, jaws agape (Xadium only slightly less so.)
"You... you know about that?" Minako asked in total shock and dismay.
"I *am* five years old, you know," Sakura replied almost haughtily, which would have been a hilarious sight to anyone but the two scandalized parents in the room. "It's a basic biological process. I really don't see the reason for your embarrassment." A look of exaggerated shock then crossed the little girl's face. "Unless..." she began sarcastically, her high-pitched voice tinged with laughter at its edges, "don't tell me.. you didn't know?!"
"I find your sense of humour very distressing," Xadium replied dryly, the initial shock of his daughter's infuriating perspicacity wearing off.
"I wasn't joking," the child replied sincerely, much to the collective ire of her progenitors.
"Shouldn't you be going back to your room, Sakura-chan?" Minako asked in a slight huff.
Sakura caught the hint of ire in her mother's voice and realized she had met another one of those aggravating lines in the parent-child interpersonal dynamic that she had always found so personally irksome. Her intellect was at least a match for her parents'; why should she be continually forced to defer to them simply because they were older than her? She wisely chose to refrain from making a sarcastic quip and decided to ask, plainly, what was bothering her.
"Am I insufficient?" She asked, with no hint of emotion in her voice.
"Insufficient?" Xadium parroted.
Sakura twitched, hating to always have to explain herself. "Why can't they just understand what I mean," she muttered low, under her breath.
"Because, dear girl," Xadium replied crossly, "Three-word sentences are generally stupid things to use when trying to express complex ideas. Something about a lack of context, wouldn't you know."
Sakura cursed his hearing (yes, she knew those words too, but wisely never employed them vocally). She coughed. "To clarify then-- am I insufficient to you as offspring. Do I not sufficiently occupy your time. Am I not enough, as they say, the 'bundle of joy'. Do you require more?"
"More context?" Minako asked.
"More children", Sakura spat back, her tone soaked in complete disgust. They were wonderful people, for whom she cared more than anything else in the universe. But sometimes they were such complete cretins.
"What makes you say that, dear?" Xadium asked, momentarily not thinking, having the sort of boneheaded inability to formulate cogent thought Gallifreyan profanity calls a Fratz. (Think mind-fart).
Sakura just pointed to her mother, whose covering blanket had slipped off during the conversation as she had sat up unthinkingly. She coughed.
The parents, who had momentarily forgotten their somewhat embarrassing physical situation, suddenly blushed in tandem and shrank back behind the cover of the sofa's back.
"Of course not," Minako said softly. "We love you, we don't want to replace you."
"I know that, Mom," Sakura replied in kind. The bonds of affection between parents and child were strong and deep, despite the sometimes icy tones of their intellectual exchanges. "It's just that..." she rocked on her heels. "You're doing that all the time." She waved to the couch. "Are you... infertile or something?"
"In...fertile?" Minako asked, stunned again.
"Not capable of initiating, sustaining, or supporting reproduction," Sakura explained.
"OF COURSE I'M NOT!" Minako almost yelled, not angrily but annoyed. Annoyed, 1- at the implication of infertility, and 2- at the implication she didn't understand what the word meant.
"You're not fertile!?" Sakura asked, sympathy beginning to well up in her little eyes. The poor woman! Humans valued their capacity to bear young ever so much! The ads on three dimensional holovid for Viagra 10000 and Super Levitron XXX made that abundantly clear!
Minako just facepalmed.
"Your mother is... quite fertile," Xadium said slowly, coughing a bit. Minako giggled slightly.
"So then you want more children," Sakura concluded.
"Not at the moment, no," Xadium replied. especially not at the moment, considering the one terror we've already created. he added mentally.
"But you keep doing that," Sakura countered, pointing to the couch.
"What's your point?" Minako asked, too tired to be scandalized any more. She just wanted the conversation to end.
"Well, if you don't want children, but you keep doing that... then... aren't you just wasting your time?" Sakura asked, nodding to herself.
Xadium couldn't help but snort at the humour of the activity being classed as a waste of time. Before he had met Minako he had harboured similar sentiments.
"Sakura-chan..." Minako began slowly, a look of understanding dawning in her eyes. "What was going on... it's not just what you read in the textbooks. I mean, the purpose of it..."
"Explain." Sakura said in her quiet tone which usually implied a demand.
"Well it feels nice," Minako began uncertainty, not happy about discussing this with a child, even one as intelligent as Sakura. Yet she knew if she tried to duck the issue or attempt to sugar-coat things, the tyke would call her on it instantly.
"So its all about sensory gratification," Sakura replied, the up tilt in her voice conveying her understanding. She turned to leave. "Please, feel free to carry on, then."
"Wait..." Xadium said, exasperated. "That's the half of it, the least important half." He didn't want the girl to have the wrong idea, and end up like Tsukino Usagi the younger.
"Oh?" Sakura asked, turning back around to look her father in the eye.
"I won't deny the pleasure-aspect of it," Xadium said slowly, putting his arm around Minako. "It can be... blissfully intoxicating. Overwhelmingly so at times. But to focus on that to the exclusion of all else... is to miss the point entirely, and to do more harm than good. The bliss of it should come more from the joy of being united with the person you love most in the universe, not the hormonal surges that go along with it."
Minako nodded. "It's how people express... care and love for one another," Minako replied softly. "To be..." she sought the right word. "...one... with the person you care about the most... it's special."
"I treasure your mother greatly," Xadium continued. "To the point that where if *this*," he waved at the couch, "was denied me by her, it would not matter. I would still cherish her absolutely and completely. That is the nature of it. You must care that much for the person before you should even think about such a union with them."
"So it goes beyond a base biological imperative," Sakura deduced. "There is an emotional bond-component, mutually expressed, co-created and reinforced by the action."
"Exactly," Minako said with a smile and a sigh of relief. "It's the most precious thing a person can share with another. It should never be given cheaply, and always given tenderly."
"I understand, thank you." Sakura replied, curtseying cutely. For a moment, the members of the small family regarded each other tenderly, all worries about the embarrassing context of the discussion lost.
"But..." Sakura began, pressing her left index finger to her forehead. "If such a thing is the most tender, intimate, personal experience that two people can share, something intensely caring and compassionate that allows the people involved to express the full range of their appreciation for each other in ways no other mode of communication could..."
"Yes?" Minako asked, brushing back her hair back a bit and hugging Xadium closer by the shoulders.
"GIVE ME SOME SUGAR, BABY!" Michiru could be heard yelling through the upstairs floor, a BANGing sound following, along with the crack of a whip. A piece of the ceiling plaster fell, coating everyone in the livingroom in a fine sheen of white plaster dust. "YES, YES, YES!!" Haruka yelled.
Sakura spat some of the plaster out of her mouth. "Then... what, pray tell, is that?"
"That, my dear," Xadium replied, deadpan, "is beyond the scope of this discussion."
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